Do you come across early Quakers?

+33 votes
1.0k views
For whatever reason, as I'm continuing to "arbor" Puritan Great Migration profiles, I'm coming across a batch of early Quakers (aka Religious Society of Friends). Their early history is very fascinating to those of us curious about the evolution of Protestant Christianity. I discovered there is already a [[Category:Quakers]] and I encourage anyone who comes across early Quakers -- or I suppose any Quakers; technically Richard Nixon was one-- to please add this category. Thanks.
in Policy and Style by Jillaine Smith G2G6 Pilot (895k points)
retagged by Liz Shifflett
So In the past two days , I have been depuping and cleaning up all those Mendenhalls that immigrated to Pennsylvania . I guess I would put them in that category for both the parents that stayed in England ( Quakers ) and the immigrants ?
I agree that the Quaker history is very interesting. One line of my family came over as Quakers and what happens when the Revolutionary War starts is quite interesting.  I also have a Mennonite line. Their problems during the Revolutionary War are even more severe.
Paula, do you have a profile here of one of them that describes what happened to them during the RW? I'd love to read it. I haven't heard much about their experience during the RW; I'm more familiar with their Underground Railroad efforts during the CW and their resistance during the various 20th century wars.

-- Jillaine

(successfully responding on my iPad)
How about those that 'associated' with Quakers? I have ancestors who where fined for allowing Quakers to harbor at their tavern/inn.

Is there a really good book that goes int the splintering and other ins and outs of the Puritan times? Seems like every other minister disagreed with something or other and took his flock and founded another town.
Toby, I don't know about a category for that, but it would be great to include that in their profile as part of their overall biography. Peter Gaunt was a person who was fined for inviting "Quaker strangers" (i.e., Quakers visiting from England) into his home. He ultimately became Quaker.
I do not have a profile - sorry.  My relatives had migrated to upstate SC, which was the western border of the colonies at that time. At the onset of the Revolutionary War, this area saw first action from the Native Americans, joined with the British.  In this frontier, when attacked by natives you either fought or died so my Quaker Chapman relatives converted to Baptist and fought. Most Quakers fled the region completely.

Further north in PA:

"On June 13, 1777, the Legislature of Pennsylvania passed a law commanding all residents to forthwith appear before the justices or other officers qualified to administer judicial oaths, and take oath or affirmation of allegiance to the State of Pennsylvania and the United States, and abjure forever all allegiance to the King and Government of Great Britain. This brought the issue fairly and fully before the Society of' Friends; the leaders of that Society stood firm to the letter of the Yearly Meeting of 1774, and generally failed to comply with the law. There can be no doubt that some, fearful alike of disownment and of the punishment for treason on the one hand, and of the penalties of the new law on the other, took the oath of allegiance secretly, but some young Friends, more earnest and candid than their brethren, attended publicly before the justices and openly and willingly complied with the law."[[http://www.qhpress.org/quakerpages/qwhp/freequakers02.htm]]

This article goes on to report of the disownment of Friends who signed. It would be a difficult position to be in.  I am working on some profiles of my Mennonite relatives who were imprisoned and punished for not signing the oath.

I poste a resource for early Quakers from Glasgow, it's one of the smallest cemetaries in or around Glasgow but goes back to the migration period, here's the link to the site for it and it has photos and the history as well.

http://www.kilmeny.vispa.com/quaker.html

P.S. it's 40 mins walk from me or 10 on a bus so if you need up to date photos I can do them for you.

Quakers... once upon a time, I combed through the Plymouth Colony court records, extracting every reference to the Sandwich Quaker unrest that I could find.  About a third of the town (20 families or so) became Quakers, and there was a smaller concentration in Scituate.  My presumed ancestor George Sutton of Scituate was a Quaker; he moved to New Jersey (where there were quite a number of early Quakers) and ended up in North Carolina (where Quakers made up a large percentage of the early settlers).  Back to Plymouth Colony, at least one of the brothers of my ancestor Stephen Peckham of Dartmouth (second generation, originally from Rhode Island) was a Quaker, and I'm sure there were other Quakers there; Dartmouth had the reputation of being the "Rhode Island" of Plymouth Colony, where religious orthodoxy was something of a lost cause.

UPDATE: 

please read the following for further refinement of Quaker categorizing:

http://www.wikitree.com/g2g/85120/would-it-be-prudent-to-subcategorize-quakers-by-meeting-

I have an early Quaker line, the Rouths (Lawrence Routh-40 first cousin to William Penn, their mothers were sisters).

His earlier Meeting would be Richmond, Yorkshire, England. Then he emigrated to Chester Co, PA. I still need to check the meetings documents there. Will be adding more documentation to his profile.

I've found documents on his children with the Chester Monthly Meeting, including the wife of one who after her husband and children died in a fire, was chastized for lewd behavior and public fornication.

At least one son emigrated to Piscatawy, New Jersey.

I would appreciate if someone would look at Routh-40 and see if I've added Categories correctly, I'm very new at that.
Toby, I've been reading the History of the Quakers by my relative Samuel M. Janney. It's available online through the Earlham college library. It gives some horrific details about the Quakers that got kicked out of the Colony. Amazing thing is that they kept going back to preach the Truth to the Puritans. Two men were eventually hanged, but they stopped before hanging an eleven year old girl! The whippings they got from those Puritans were awful. Go figure... I also have a line that was kicked out for the Seventh Day Baptist beliefs they preached ;-)
Hello Paula -

I too would be very interested in that information. My GGG GM's immediate family seems to go "dark" exactly during that period (AR) from Dover, NH. There seems to be quite a contingency of Quakers in the Dover-South Berwick, ME area during that time. If my memory serves me correctly, their first meting house, in that area, was built shortly before the RW. It appears to be only her immediate family as her sibs, and other family members remain "above ground" in Dover. It appears that while I had a few Sandwich Quaker Families, I had an equal amount of sympathizers who would always get thrown out of town (and subsequently re-instated when it was convenient for Plymouth Colony, e.g. Cudworth,Robinson).

Thanks for any pointers you may share.  Best, Jim
Most of my "Friends" ancestors were early settlers of Dartmouth and the area now called Westport.  Dartmouth and Westport are now in Bristol County, Mass., but before the state line was finalized this area was (from time to time) part of Rhode Island.  I didn't discover that until I had noticed that it looked like my ancestors moved back and forth between the two states and research showed me that THEY never moved;  the state line whisked back and forth like a windshield wiper in a heavy downpour!

6 Answers

+7 votes
 
Best answer
We have a brand new project called Quakers that will be live as soon as we have the project badge. Previously, Quakers was a subproject of the William Penn project. The new project is for Quakers from all over the world. Here is the link:

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:Quakers
by Paula J G2G6 Pilot (277k points)
selected by Andrea Powell
I'm happy to report the Quakers Project badge is ready to go!
+8 votes
Here's a good list of famous quakers - (really... James Dean?) - http://www.friendsmemorial.org/p/famous-quakers.html
by Robin Wedertz G2G6 Mach 1 (19.6k points)
edited by Robin Wedertz
+8 votes
Sometimes, I think my whole genealogy is Quaker, but it just seems that way.  My grandfather was a Quaker who came West in 1890 and became a Presbyterian.  I find it interesting that his line goes back to John Bowne and Hannah Feake in 1675, his family made it all the way to Cornwall, NY in about 200 years, then he came West.  

I think Herbert Hoover was a Quaker as well.   My grandfather used the gentle language language of thee and thou, somehow I don't think Nixon talked that way.
by Orinda Spence G2G4 (4.1k points)
Nixon was, I believe, a "birthright" Quaker-- born into it. I'm not sure how much he practiced it.  I'll look into it.

Interesting, Orinda, that your grandfather spoke the "gentle" language of thee and thou. I didn't realize it came forward that recently.  (When did he live?)

I always thought the thee and thou speaking was so formal until I learned that those terms were actually early variations of informal speech. For those who speak other languages, you know that there is the formal "you" ("usted" in Spanish, for example) and the informal, or familiar "you" ("tu").  English used to have that distinction as well. "You" was formal; "thee/thou" was informal.  Quakers used the latter because they believed all were equal and all should be spoken to at the same level. (Which is also why they didn't take their hats off in the presence of people of "authority"-- that practice got them into a lot of trouble.)
I saw a quote, and it might be on his profile, where he stated something like others would never realize how much his Quaker background influenced him.  Oh, and you'll love this Jillaine, dear cousin, I'm related to him too.  :)  5th cousins 2x removed.  I have a ton of Quakers in my family from New England up into the mid 1800s so I will certainly start adding this category as I come across them.  I also started a post on religious leaders (Category Professions: Religious leaders and how to categorize them?... or something like that)  and how to classify them...Eugene stated he thought it would be best by region to narrow it down, and Phil is in on this too.  I think that despite our separation of State and Church policy here in the States that obviously, this country was founded on religion and it is an important category to include on profiles.  Thanks for bringing this to the forefront.

 

Also, the Quakers were sometimes the only source for records but  I have yet to find one online. And if you can't find a grave odds are they may have been Quaker because they did not normally mark their graves...pretenscious.
"founded on religion".  Sometimes, I think our country was founded despite religion and other times because of it but many would disagree that it was founded on it; the problem lies in which religion you are talking about.
My grandfather, Nathaniel King Rider Brown, known as King Brown was born in 1870, d. 1955.   I heard the gentle language when I visited his sisters in Cornwall, NY in 1953.  It was a familial language, used for the family.   I never heard it out of the context of the family.    King Brown m. Hattie Stiles and born Presbyterian, she had learned to speak the language as well.  To me is a peaceful language and I loved hearing it.
LOL, you are right Orinda!  I have Stiles in my line too.  You are lucky that you had the opportunity to learn the gentle language, by my generation, at least in my family, the Quaker following had faded and melded into other doctrines.
Religion and commerce. One group of people saw coming to the new world as a haven for the expression of their form of Christianity. Another group saw how they could make a lot of money exploiting the natural resources of this new world. The two, hand in hand, are entertwined in the roots of this nation... (then and now...)  oops. i think this is getting way off topic....

Sometimes I think my ancestor emigrated for both religion and commerce. I find no record of him as a Quaker, before or after coming from England to Boston in 1674 (a terrible time to be a Quaker in Boston; why the heck would you do that, if you were a Quaker?), and no mention of his time in America until he comes to Pennsylvania several months before Penn. He is by now a Quaker. Was that because Quakers were getting free land? Or was he always a Quaker, and I just can't prove it yet? To his credit, he remained a Quaker, and brought his family up that way, continuing for at least 4 generations in my direct line.

As part of my curiousity regarding them, while doing my genealogy, I attended a Quaker meeting several months ago. My wife has joined me, and we now attend regularly, although we are not yet ready to call ourselves Quakers. But I think it's heading that way, and it all started with genealogy...

David, I love your story! My husband and I are both convinced Quakers and attend Bethesda Friends Meeting where we are members. But coming to Meeting as a result of genealogy? That's an awesome story!
You are wondering why your ancestor became a Quaker.  Perhaps, he was tired of being berated by preachers.  I  attended a very old Quaker meeting, it was the the my grandfather attended in or near Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, New York.   There was a peacefulness without benefit of preaching that I found appealing.  

We were visiting my great aunts and as we toured, they were very sensitive to museums that displayed guns, mostly very old muskets, and would not allow me, I was 12 years old, to view them.   Interesting.  I don't know if Quakers still have the quiet meetings, but I found it appealing.    I live in a very small town in the West and would have to travel probably 100 miles to attend a Meeting.   

I have a modern day Quaker friend.   He sees war and peace in incidences that I  miss entirely.   I "love" his insight.
Sorry for the late reply! Yes, I think I'm heading for full Quaker-hood (Quakerness?), but am still investigating. But, this weekend, as we gathered for meeting (Buffalo MM, Buffalo, NY), on a gorgeous, sunny morning, we found that no one there had the key to the building! They decided to have an open air meeting, and I looked around at the folks I've just begun to know, with great fondness. Already I get a familial feeling for them, and am grateful my life is heading this way.  And yes, all because of genealogy!

 

Any ideas on researching Boston MM records, circa 1676-1682?

 

Hope all is peaceful in your neck of the woods!

 

Dave

I think Herbert Hoover was a Quaker as well. 

Yes, he had a strong Quaker background. There is a house in Newberg, Oregon where he spent some of his growing-up years. The museum there speaks of his lifetime of compassion for people and the work he did to feed the poor all over the world. For more look up the Hoover-Minthorn house. It's sponsored by the Colonial Dames and my mother was on their board for many years ;-) 

+7 votes
Hi Jillaine,

If you start with my first Willson ancestor to come to America, the spring before Wm. Penn... http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Willson-169  you shall find many.  Also many were booted for marrying non-members (e.g. Hicksites) or hauling a cannon during the Revolutionary War...LOL.  Many of the family were also intertwined with the Lundy family.  Supposedly, royalty???  The descendants, especially Samuel Willson I, was extremely prominent in the movement.  There are several 'juicy' tidbits contained within the biographies of these descendants.  I hope this answers your question and gives a bit of entertainment also!  I will try to find time to tag them all.

Cheers!

David
by David Wilson G2G6 Pilot (120k points)
Thanks, David!
This is great David!  You are awesome!  :)
I'll take the royalty, however I can get it.
It occurs to me now why the royalty idea. The first Lundy was Richard, referred to in genealogies of the family as Richard I, as he had a line of progeny that went to Richard IV. I, myself, am descended from Richard III, but the Roman numerals may lend the idea of royalty. Really, they are there to distinguish between Richards.
+4 votes
Not sure how to set up these brackets correctly?

  I added this to a profile.  Please check it whenever you get a chance.

[[Category:Quakers: Society of Friends in Northern Rhode Island]]

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Arnold-3421

 

Thanks Chris
by Chris Hoyt G2G6 Pilot (854k points)

Chris, you might want to move this over to Would it be prudent to subcategorize Quakers by Meeting?  Folks with more knowledge of categories are more likely to see it there. (i.e., do not have a clue... ;-)

+3 votes
My English Quaker forbears date back to pre 1700

John Bax form Ockley , Surrey, b 1510

and Christopher Coates form Yorks  b 1500

I am related to them via my maternal grandmother who was Gulielma Dixon

Her father was Ralph Dixon

Dixons go back to John Dixon  pre 1700 and are related to a whole host of Quakers, including Pease, Backhouse, Fry, Cadbury etc
by Living Ringer G2G6 (7.3k points)

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